The Diva Hosts a Murderer

Title: The Diva Hosts a Murderer
Author: Krista Davis
Published: May 26, 2026 by Kensington Cozies
Format: Kindle, 329 Pages
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Series: A Domestic Diva Mystery #19
Source: NetGalley and Kensington

Blurb: With a big crowd descending on her Northern Virginia home, it’s a good thing event planner Sophie Winston is an expert at entertaining. Whipping up patriotic pastries is as easy as pie for her, though meeting the man her widowed Aunt Melly just impulsively married in Las Vegas is a little more awkward. Especially when Melly’s longtime, now-heartbroken secret admirer is there too, which could lead to some fireworks.

But the house party really gets explosive when Sophie’s favorite tour guide falls victim to a killer—and evidence points to Sophie’s own father. Will DNA really incriminate her dad? And what’s the real story with her new uncle-by-marriage and the mysterious pal he’s brought along with him? Some of the secrets Sophie’s discovering are raising flags—and while the police department casts suspicion on her father, she has to declare her independence as a detective to find the real culprit, and serve justice along with her red, white, and blue cupcakes

My Opinion: There are only a handful of cozy mystery series that still hit the spot for me these days, and Krista Davis’s Domestic Diva books remain one of them. A big part of that is the setting. Old Town Alexandria has this irresistible, lived in charm with brick sidewalks, historic houses, and the hum of neighborhood life. And every time I open a new Diva book, I’m right back there. Yes, I’ve been. Yes, I felt the pull. And yes, I absolutely indulge in a little personal nostalgia every time Sophie Winston starts another adventure.

This time around, though, you might want to keep a mental murder board handy. Davis throws a lot of names, connections, and neighborly entanglements at the reader, and there were moments when I had to pause and mentally reshuffle who was related to whom, who belonged to which barbecue, brunch, or suspicious circumstance where bodies inconveniently appeared where they shouldn’t.

The pacing, however, wobbles a bit. There are stretches that feel longer than they need to be, with some repetition that had my attention drifting. Then the final clue dropped, and suddenly everything snapped back into place. I had that little “oh, okay, that does make sense” moment, even if the fallout is going to make things awkward on the cobbled streets of Old Town for a while.

But the ending, specifically the bit with Bernie, left me blinking at the page. I was reading an ARC, so maybe it’ll shift in the final version, but as written, it felt tacked on, almost like it wandered in from another storyline entirely. I said out loud, “What the heck, Krista,” which is not my usual reaction to this series.

Still, spending a weekend with these characters, nineteen books in, no less, is its own kind of comfort. I’m not tired of them. Not even close. I just wish this installment had a little more momentum in the middle to keep me fully locked in. Even so, Old Town worked its magic, the mystery eventually clicked, and I enjoyed being back in Sophie’s world, quirks, potlucks, recipes, and all.

Invasive Species

Title: Invasive Species
Author: Ellery Adams
Published: April 14, 2026 by Hanover Square Press
Format: Kindle, 327 Pages
Genre: Horror

Blurb: Something’s not right in Cold Harbor—more so than usual. While this sleepy small town has seen its fair share of monsters in cheating husbands and leering bosses, none are as hungry as Mrs. Smith. The mysterious resident has finally emerged from her crumbling mansion on the hill, mesmerizing the townspeople with her beauty. Her secret? Nine human sacrifices to feed her immortality.

Natalie Scott is more worried about Mrs. Smith blocking her first real estate sale—the one that will take her from stay-at-home mom to working woman extraordinaire. She's eager to prove herself in a world where the social mores of 1980s suburbia reign, where she's expected to keep a magazine-perfect home and raise beautiful children, all while sticking to her husband's budget. Natalie's two best friends are facing their own demons, and Mrs. Smith and her deep, dark woods are an easy scapegoat for everyone's problems.

But Natalie's twelve-year-old daughter, Jill, and her Icelandic housekeeper, Una, can sense something deeper at play. Armed with library books and a whole lot of grit, Jill and Una team up to save the town once and for all. But as the rest of Cold Harbor sinks into anger, fear, and jealousy, they’ll have to confront the What does it really mean to be a monster?

My Opinion: Invasive Species is not your usual Ellery Adams. I went in expecting her familiar cozy mystery warmth and instead found myself in something darker, creepier, and far more unsettling than I ever anticipated. Not in a bad way, just in a “wait, Ellery wrote this?” kind of way. If I had to label it, I’d call it Horror meets Women’s Fiction with a strong feminist undercurrent, but even that doesn’t quite capture the strange, slippery thing she’s doing here. It’s a mash up I haven’t seen before, and honestly, it grabbed me from page one.

Part of the surprise may come from the fact that she’s working with a new publisher for this occult leaning detour. It makes me wonder what else she has tucked up her sleeve for longtime readers who think they know her lane.

This book is peculiar in a “I can’t look away” sense. Yes, there’s creepy imagery (some of it very creepy), but Adams slips in humor, too, and even a bit of spice that will push the envelope for some readers. It’s a cocktail of eerie, funny, feminist, and occasionally eyebrow raising.

The reader is dropped into 1980s Cold Harbor, a polished town of affluence, golden children, a yacht club, and parents desperate to maintain the illusion of perfection while quietly cracking underneath it. Into this Stepford adjacent setting slithers Mrs. Smith, also known as the “Mother of Eels”, who hasn’t left her home in daylight for decades and who has decided it’s time to make her grand return. Unfortunately for the town, she requires nine human sacrifices, and nine year olds seem to be her preferred entrée.

Twelve year old Jill and her family’s Icelandic housekeeper, Una, are the only ones who recognize the danger for what it is. They realize this demon is targeting Jill’s friends, and the timing couldn’t be worse: a bar mitzvah on a boat, where all the children are conveniently gathered in one floating buffet. The Mother of Eels couldn’t have planned it better herself. But then again, she might have dropped a clue or two.

The ending is intense, the kind of sequence where you realize you’ve been holding your breath and your eyes refuse to blink. Not something to read right before bed unless you enjoy replaying nightmare fuel visuals in the dark.

Some readers have called this a “cozy horror” with feminist vibes, and while that’s not wrong, it still doesn’t fully capture the odd energy here. What I can say is this: you’ll keep turning pages, partly out of fascination and partly out of disbelief that Ellery Adams, queen of the cozy mystery, has delivered something this wild, this creepy, and this unexpectedly bold. Whether it works for everyone is another question, but it certainly shows a new, daring side of her.

If nothing else, Invasive Species proves that Adams can still surprise her readers… and maybe haunt them a little, too.

The Shippers

Title: The Shippers
Author: Katherine Center
Published: May 19, 2026 by St. Martin's Press
Format: Kindle, 336 Pages
Genre: Romance

Blurb: After a whole lifetime of being bad at love, JoJo Burton decides to solve her intimacy issues once and for all at her sister’s destination wedding on a cruise ship. With the help of a little pop psychology, she diagnoses herself with a fixation on the neighborhood guy who was her her first crush and first kiss (and who just happens to be a newly-divorced wedding guest ), and she decides to woo him during the cruise for some long-delayed closure. Only problem is, her sister’s a little busy being a bride at the moment—so JoJo ropes in her childhood bestie, Cooper Watts, to be her wing man. Cooper: who RSVPed no, but then showed up, anyway. Cooper: who left town without a word four years earlier and moved to London. Cooper: who was, if she’s honest, the worst heartbreak of JoJo’s life. It’s bliss for her to see him again, and it’s agony, too—and the more they team up for Project Conquest, the more she obsesses over questions she can’t bring herself to ask.

Shipboard antics ensue in this witty, heart-tugging, childhood-friends-to-lovers romance—as JoJo and Cooper fake flirt, slow dance, share a cabin, sing duets, treat sunburns, get jealous, rescue each other over and over, and finally, at last, figure it all out in the most blissful, swoony, romantic way.

My Opinion: The Shippers hooked me right away. The opening had that fizzy rom com energy full of light, charm, and promise. But somewhere around the middle, the momentum slipped, and I found myself watching JoJo, a 29 year old commitment phobe, wander in circles trying to reenact a teenage kiss and “find herself.” And look, I enjoy a good story as much as anyone, but there’s only so long I can cheer for a grown woman who keeps tripping over herself

The big “miscommunication” at the heart of the plot? Most readers will spot it early. And that’s fine; if that’s the trope the author wants to lean into, I’ll play along. But I did spend a good chunk of the book muttering “okay, but can we please get on with it,” like I was stuck behind a slow driver in the fast lane.

This is my second Kathryn Center novel, the first being The Love Haters, which I genuinely enjoyed. That book had a fuller cast with background characters who added texture, humor, and emotional grounding. Here, we technically have a mother and grandmother, but they don’t offer the kind of guidance or maturity JoJo so clearly needs. It felt like the story kept teeing up opportunities for growth, only to let them drift away.

And the length… well, it went on a bit longer than the story could comfortably support. The miscommunication trope becomes a never ending loop, and some of the logistical leaps are so far fetched they feel like the narrative equivalent of “don’t look too closely at this part, because I had to make the story connect.” I get why the author made those choices since sometimes you need a wild detour to keep the plot moving, but it did pull me out of the story more than once.

For many readers, this rom com will absolutely scratch the itch: it’s cute, it’s breezy, and it has that signature Kathryn Center warmth. But I’m still on the fence. By the end of a romance, I want to feel like the characters have grown, like they’ve nudged each other toward becoming better versions of themselves. I didn’t quite get that with JoJo and Cooper. They’re likable enough, but their arc felt more like a loop than a climb.

In the end, it’s a pleasant read, just not the one that will stick with me the way The Love Haters did.

Fatal Fiction

Title: Fatal Fiction
Author: Karen MacInerney
Published: June 30, 2024 by Gray Whale Press
Format: Paperback, 199 Pages
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Series: Snug Harbor Mysteries #4

Blurb: The air at Seaside Cottage Books is tinged with autumn, and bookseller Max Sayers is helping her friend Denise Wilmington start a new chapter by turning the abandoned shop next door into a cozy coffee house. But when the two women dig up a decades-old rhododendron by the front walk, they uncover a grisly secret entwined with the bush's roots: a woman's skeleton, buried with a gold ring.

But Max doesn't have time to dig up dirt on old bones. The next day, a famous Maine author's bequest to the Snug Harbor library vanishes within hours of arriving. Then Max's assistant Bethany and her boyfriend Devin discover the head librarian—and Devin's new boss--strangled with a phone cord behind the circulation desk.

Suspicion quickly darkens the crisp fall air. Was Bethany's boyfriend, who had no love lost for his new boss, behind the library director's untimely death? Or is a darker, older plot hidden in Snug Harbor's leafy streets? When a curious Max finds herself the subject of the next attack, the plot arc becomes terrifyingly clear. It's up to Max to find the villain, and fast... or her next chapter may be her last.

My Opinion: *It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to grab a red pen mid chapter, but this one had my fingers twitching. Plotting gaps, “wait, what about…?” moments, and repetition that felt like déjà vu on a loop kept pulling me out of the story.

To be fair, the dual plot setup almost saved things. Just when I’d start to tire of one thread, the other would wander back in. But then the second storyline wrapped up so abruptly it read like the author glanced at the page count and thought, oh no, I need to land this plane right now, even if it is only 199 pages. It’s the kind of rushed ending that makes you flip back a few pages to see if you missed something—spoiler: you didn’t, and most likely, already had it figured out.

The pacing overall felt slow and uninspired, and the repetition didn’t help. By the end, the only bright spot was that the main female character wasn’t romantically entangled with the small town detective. Which was good since, the police could care less about the dead guy in the library.

And here’s the bigger realization this book nudged forward: I’ve outgrown this corner of the self-published cozy mystery world. Too many of these stories need a second set of editorial eyes to catch the missteps before they hit readers. I used to overlook that. Now it just grates.

So, much like the author’s Gray Whale Inn series, my time in Snug Harbor ends here. Some series fade out gently; others hand you the scissors and let you cut the cord yourself.